“No one is as suited as you, Clay.” His brother’s dark gaze was unrelenting. “You have thwarted dozens of assassination attempts. Your work protecting the Duchess of Leeds was commendable, and you had no problems settling yourself into a more domestic setting than you have been previously accustomed.”
The Duchess of Leeds had been the victim of a murderous plot, and he had served her well. In so doing, she had become his friend. She possessed the heart of an angel, with a willingness to take in all the stray beasts of London, but she had been different. She had not been Ara.
He had never loved her.
And it did not matter how much time had passed. He had not forgotten a moment of the time he had spent with Ara. Kissing her, holding her, the wildness of her burnished curls tangling around them. The soft giggles he could coax from her lips with his wandering mouth and hands.
He shook himself free of the memories, cloying like ivy, threatening to choke and overrun him. “My history with her renders it an impossibility. What of Strathmore? He would be an excellent man for the job.”
“He is otherwise occupied,” Leo said curtly. “I grow weary of your objections, brother, as they are all immaterial at worst and flimsy at best. You are the man I have chosen, the man the Home Office has chosen, to protect her.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he thundered as the last, fine filament of his control broke. “I will not do it.”
“Sodding hell, Clay.” His brother fixed a dispassionate frown upon him. “I did not wish to do this, but you have left me without a choice. If you do not take on this task, you will be suspended from service. The Home Office requires you to perform this duty, and they will not accept anyone else. Do you not think I already tried to substitute another, knowing of your past?”
His heart thrummed faster, his chest rising and falling, each breath harsher than the next. He had never supposed Leo would attempt to protect him in such a fashion. Though they had come of age side by side, Leo possessed not a modicum of maudlin sentiment, or so Clay had always supposed.
“Suspended from service,” he bit out, as though the words tasted bitter and ugly in his mouth. For they did. His work in the Special League was what had given him purpose these last eight years. Because of her, it was all he had. And now because of her, he also stood to lose it.
How bloody fitting.
“I am sorry, brother.” Leo’s somber tone said more than his apology could convey.
He swallowed the bile that had begun in his stomach and worked its way into his throat. “I do not have a choice, do I?”
Leo’s lips compressed. “I am afraid not.”
He spun away, stalking down the hall, intent upon inflicting damage upon the first inanimate object he spied. With his fists. But there was nothing in sight that he could punch, aside from damask-covered walls and tables rife with bric-a-brac. Pictures of her. Pictures of her husband. Of the two of them with a small lad.
He could not face them, so he turned back to the fate awaiting him. His life had never been his to rule. Why should this assignment be any different? He would do what he must. Because there was no other option.
“Very well. I shall do it.” He gave a terse nod, feeling a heavy weight descend upon his chest as he acquiesced. It held the finality of a death sentence, and he had never felt more like a man being informed of his impending swing upon the gallows.
“Good man.” Leo strode to him and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know what this is costing you, Clay, and do not think that I don’t appreciate it. I will continue to assert pressure for you regarding the creation of a peerage.”
Following his previous assignment, there had been rumbles that he may be rewarded for his service to the Crown with a title. Clay knew better than to hope for such an eventuality.
“Do you think I give a damn about gaining a title?” he asked dismissively, his lip curling. “I never have, and I never will.”
But that was a lie, and he knew it. For if he had possessed a title, he would still have Ara. He never would have lost her.
“Even so,” Leo said, “you deserve recompense for your service. There is no man better.”
“I am doing this because I must and for no other reason,” he persisted. “But I do not like it, Leo. And neither will I forget it.”
His half brother gave him an odd little smile then. “Let it be just one more to add to the vast catalog of black marks upon my soul.”
Clay could only hope it would not also be a black mark upon his.
Chapter Two
Eight years earlier
Whoever he was, he had been the most beautiful young man she had ever seen. But she supposed she would never get to know his name.
Ara had been watching him for three days in secret. On this, the fourth day, she lingered hours past the appointed time, and still he did not come.
The first day had been purely unintentional. She had been engaging in the impulses her father so reviled by wandering as far away from Kingswood Hall as she could possibly find herself. She had ridden a feisty mare to the edge of Papa’s sprawling country seat, all the way to the woodland that had always held her fancy, and had tethered her mount to a tree so she could wander about in unabashed joy at her freedom.
Papa was not at home and would be gone for the next fortnight at least. Mama was prone to the megrims. Her brother Cecil had gone abroad. Her sister Rosamunde was happily being the Countess of Somerset, off with her husband or one of her paramours.
Which left Ara in possession of a great deal of free time and an unprecedented lack of chaperoning. Perhaps it was because she had already had two seasons, and at one-and-twenty, she was expected to make a match soon with the Marquess of Dorset. Whatever the reason, she would not complain.
For Ara did not like the Marquess of Dorset. And she did not like Papa’s disapproving frowns and insistence she marry the odious man. Dorset was ten years her senior, and he had an irritating way of talking above everything she said, as though he could not even hear a word she spoke.
But she did like the mystery gentleman in the woods with his strapping form, his dark hair, and his broad face, an arresting complexity of strong angles and chiseled perfection. She had been seated on the forest floor, her back against a large old tree trunk, reading a book, when the snapping of branches and rustling of leaves had alerted her to a presence.
From the moment he had first appeared, jogging and stripped down to nothing more than a shirt and plain dark trousers, performing all manner of athletic feats she supposed served to enhance the lovely strength of his body, he had robbed her of breath. She had looked upon him, and something in her belly had tightened. Her mouth had gone dry. A tingling sensation had blossomed in a forbidden place. She had wanted to know him.
But to her shame, she had simply watched him in silence, drinking in his body’s fluid motions without alerting him to her presence. She had stayed silent and still as moss until he had gone, jogging away as if he had never been at all.
The second day, she made excuses to Mama and returned in the hopes she would see him again, though she told herself she simply wished to go for a ride and take the country air once more. She had been about to leave in disappointment when he had appeared, bounding into the forest with his vitality and his magnetism and his formidable size. He was so very enormous, the sort of man who would dwarf her. As she watched him, she had wondered what it would be like to be held in such large, long arms. To be cradled against that broad chest. To be touched by a man who was strong enough to do anything he wished.
Dorset was not strong or vital. He possessed a paunch that spoke of his fondness for spirits and a thinning pate. Occasionally, spittle collected in the corners of his lips as he spoke, and she found it revolting.
For three days, she watched the unknown young man perform his athletic coups in silence from her hiding place, dreaming of emerging and speaking to him. Of introducing herself, though she had not possessed an inkling of what she would have said.
Ara sighed. Perhaps it was time to return home.
A stick snapped behind her, and she scrambled to her feet, spinning about.
There he was.
This close, she could see him even better. Could appreciate the slash of his nose, the fullness of his lips, the regal ridges of his cheekbones, the wideness of his jaw. There was a wildness about him, a ruggedness, and a draw that made her long to be closer. To be so close she could touch him, could trace the breadth of his shoulders, the column of his neck. His hair was black as ink and so long it nearly brushed his shoulders, falling in luxurious waves. His eyes were dark, focused on her now with an intensity that stole her breath all over again.
“How many days have you been watching me?” he asked.
She felt a fiery rush of shameful heat coloring her cheeks. Dear heavens. How could he have known? He had never once even glanced in her direction, and she had been so careful—so very, very, careful—not to move or rustle or make even the slightest sound that would alert him to her presence.
She summoned all the frost she had in her being, which was a feeble fraction in the face of his great, pulsing fire. He was like the sun blotting out everything else in the sky. “I beg your pardon?”
He stepped closer, and she could smell him. Man and sweat and leather and musk. Nothing had ever smelled better. She wanted to press her nose against the Adam’s apple of his throat, inhale the essence of him directly so she could recall it wherever and whenever she wished.
A smile flirted with the corners of his lips. “You heard me correctly. How many days have you been watching me? Three by my count, though I daresay it could have been more. I tend to get lost in my own thoughts.”
He had thoughts? How odd, for he owned all of hers at the moment. She could not think of anything but him. Something deep inside her, some unknown and primitive part of her, said this was the man for her. That he was hers and she would be his.
With great effort, she shook free from his spell, chastising herself. Oh, do cease being a ninny, Araminta! Little wonder everyone is always thinking you so silly. You cannot fancy yourself in love with a man you do not know.
But it was not that she thought herself in love with him, not precisely. Rather it was that she felt, in that moment, with just the two of them, she could love him. One day. That this queer, indefinable rightness she felt in her bones meant something. All foolish, all so naïve. Little wonder her father ever despaired of her making a match when she could not help but to spin tales about a man she did not know while the suitors who vied for her hand were always uninteresting and unwanted.
Swiftly, she recalled he had spoken to her. That he was awaiting her response.
He knew how many days she had watched him. Knew she had watched him all along, and yet he had never shown even a hint of awareness of her. How humiliating to have been caught ogling a stranger in such fashion. If Papa ever learned of her disgrace, he would never forgive her.
“I have not been watching you,” she lied, tipping up her chin in defiance and daring him to gainsay her.
His smile deepened to a grin, and her heart thudded so loudly she swore he must have heard it. “You have been watching me, and we both know it. You may as well dispense with your prevarication, for it is futile.”
She rather supposed it was.
Feeling out of her depths, she huffed out a small breath, staring at him, wishing she could read his eyes and know his thoughts. “What have you been doing?”
He raised a brow. “Truth at last? I have been training.”
“Training,” she repeated, frowning as she tried to comprehend precisely what that meant.
“Also, I have been giving you something worth watching.” He had the audacity to wink then, the knave.
Her heart sighed.
He was beautiful.
And he was hers.
She decided there, in the shade of the trees, that whoever this man was, she was going to marry him.
Chapter Three
He was here.
Sharing the same roof.
Inhabiting the same space.
Ara stared blankly out the window of her drawing room. Outside, London bustled about its day. The sun attempted to pierce the fog. Carriages rumbled, taking the fashionable to and from their homes on St. James’s Square. How mundane, all the world continuing, breath by breath, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.
But there was an interloper in her home. An unwanted presence. The last man she had ever wanted to see again.
He had not returned to the chamber yesterday following his cold retreat. The Duke of Carlisle had entered alone, informing her Mr. Ludlow would be settling into guest apartments forthwith, and that for the foreseeable future, he would be charged with acting as her attendant. A handful of other sentries would be added as guards as well, but all would answer to Mr. Ludlow.
“You are to trust him in all matters,” Carlisle had said solemnly. “He is here for your protection.”
Trust him in all matters. That was the trouble. She could not trust the man. Not ever again, though she had been foolish enough to do so once. All she had managed to gain was a broken heart and her beautiful son.
A choked sob escaped her lips even now, one day removed from the awful conversation. When he had stormed away, a great, soothing relief had blanketed her in the calming air of his absence. She had been convinced he would not remain, and she would be free of him.
But then the Duke of Carlisle had dashed her hopes and set her on edge. She had requested, as politely as she had been able to manage, a different guard. Anyone else would have sufficed.
“Mr. Ludlow is the only man I would entrust with your protection, Your Grace,” he had told her. “The Home Office has issued its decree, and until the conspirators responsible for the duke’s death are jailed, I am afraid you will have to accustom yourself to this temporary way of life.”
How was she to accustom herself to his presence in her own home, the one place of refuge she had remaining to her? The last place she felt safe? The knowledge he was here vibrated the very air, as though he were a ghost haunting her rather than a flesh-and-blood man. She had lain awake well into the night, thinking of him, four doors down the hall eight years after the first time she had seen him in the forest.
She should have run that day rather than lingering to watch. If she had only known, she would have fled. She never would have returned. Ara pressed her heated forehead to the cool pane of glass. Perhaps she was growing ill. Her lungs felt tight in her chest and she was so very warm all over.
“Your Grace?”
There was the voice, dark and delicious as chocolate. And like chocolate, she wanted more. She wanted to taste it on her tongue. No, no, no. Gads, where had that errant thought emerged from? She tamped it down, down, down. Buried it good and deep inside herself where it belonged. Pressing a hand over hear frantic heart as if to absorb the beats, she spun to face the source.
He had entered her drawing room without her hearing, and now he stood within arm’s reach, those dark eyes burning into hers. He seemed somehow taller today than he had yesterday, his frame wide and formidable and barely civilized, contained in a dark coat, silver waistcoat, black trousers, and a simple neck cloth.
“I beg your pardon for the intrusion,” he said into the charged silence. “I knocked several times and you did not answer.”
He had knocked? She hadn’t heard, so lost had she been in the turmoil of her thoughts. But she did not wish for him to know that. To sense her inner weakness toward him. To know that just the sight of him made an old and pathetic part of her long to throw herself into his arms.
His arms had once f
elt like home.
She tipped up her chin. “I answered you. Perhaps you did not hear.”
He stared at her, saying nothing, his fathomless gaze scouring her as if he could mark her with it or swallow her whole. “I heard nothing, madam,” he said at last. “You need to sharpen your senses.”
How dare he take her to task? His curt words stung.
“My senses are already sharp enough.” They were horribly aware of him. My God. She could even smell him, and his scent was familiar and yet new. Musk and leather and potently masculine. A shameful surge of warmth pooled in her core.
For some reason, she recalled what he had once done to her there with his mouth. With his tongue. Her cheeks heated but she maintained his gaze with the greatest effort. What in heaven’s name was wrong with her? She was feverish. Yes, she must be coming down with something dreadful. Surely that was the answer, the only reason she felt flushed and odd. Her perplexing state had nothing to do with him.
How was she to endure his presence at Burghly House when she could not even bear to think his name?
“Madam, your senses can never be sharp enough when there are seasoned killers determined to hunt you down and murder you.” His tone, like his statement, was savage. Grim.
She flinched. “I do not understand what my…” she trailed off, unable to say the word murder aloud, for it made Freddie’s awful, violent end too real. It made the danger facing her more genuine. It made her chest go tighter still. She cleared her throat and began anew. “I do not understand what my death would accomplish. Freddie’s position made him vulnerable, but I have no role in the governing of Ireland, nor have I ever spoken publicly on the matter. What could they possibly want with his widow?”
“You do not wish to know what they could want with you.” He came nearer to her, crowding her with his scent and his body and the memories he provoked, memories that lingered like stars in the morning sky as the sun rose. Dazzling glimpses into what had once been. “For now, all you need trouble yourself with is the indisputable fact there is an enemy who wishes you ill. I understand that you are accustomed to silk and tea and drawing rooms, but the men who murdered your husband do not give a damn about your insipid world. They detonate bombs that kill children. They carve innocent men to death in the middle of a park. They do not care about anything more than their desire to gain Irish independence by any means necessary. They will spill your blood and laugh upon your grave if it gives them what they want.”
Nobody's Duke (League of Dukes Book 1) Page 2
